the earth is (not) a cold dead place
by phollie
Summary: Driven to the limits of his sanity after the events of 3.0, Kaworu returns to his last loop to finish what he started. [AU. Kawoshin, some Marisuka.]
1. prologue: the only moment we were alone

A/N: This is something I've been working on ever since my first viewing of 3.0. I was going to wait until the whole fic was pre-written before posting anything from it, but, well, 3.0 has been released in hi-def online and I'm a little too giddy to stay quiet about this fic any longer.

Basically this is my own wish fulfillment of Kaworu losing his shit after 3.0. Seeing him reach such a high-strung and emotional state when he realized his failure was so incredibly different from the calm exterior we're used to seeing; I can just imagine him beating himself up every time he would fail to bring Shinji happiness in his countless timelines, and this one, in which he had been planning for for 14 years, was just the final straw.

Truthfully, I'm pretty crappy at updating regularly, but I'm shooting for this fic being roughly 7 or 8 chapters, and I'm going to try really hard to avoid any long waits in between chapters. Key word being "try".

Also, this is rated M for just about everything the M rating applies to.

* * *

**the earth is (not) a cold dead place**

**::**

_prologue: the only moment we were alone_

**::**

You watch as the world slowly suffocates him. Time and time again, every loop and lifetime, every rebirth and choice and universe that branches out endlessly from one single moment in time, Shinji Ikari is still in pain.

The loops in which he's in pain because of you are the most crushing, but it never gets any easier to see him cry no matter the cause. For countless years you watch this, watch as your efforts crumble into dust beneath the weight of fate, watch as the vision of him becomes blurry and further away whenever he shuts out the world around him, even the worlds he can't see. For countless years you shape the fragile web of space and time in your hands until they're pliant and meaningless. And every time, no matter how many strings you pull, how many things you cross out of existence, how many times you give Shinji your entire heart and more, you fail. And he is always, always alone in the end.

By the hundredth loop, you're beginning to feel something within you coming undone. On your lowest of days, you reach up to the muscle-red sky and wait for him to fall out of it and into your arms. You go to sleep with a heavy heart and have fitful dreams of the boy hating you, rejecting you. Sometimes you still hear his screams after you're crushed within the hand of Unit 01, but that was a very, very long time ago. How many lifetimes ago was it? You can't recall, there have been so many. But you'll take the burden of that memory as long as Shinji never has to remember his own guilt of killing you over and over.

There are so many coffins. Every time you awake in the cold confines of a new one, you can glance over at the one beside you and remember the failure of that timeline, and then the one beside that one, and then on and on and on as you look down with hollow eyes at the endless row of empty crypts. The varying memories of all the new and creative and horrible ways in which you've had to leave Shinji behind grips at your heart like a metal clasp, icy and painful. You shake off the agony and try again. Fail, restart. Fail, restart. Continue, continue, continue, try again, fail. Restart. Redo. But always, always loving him.

A part of you thinks loving Shinji Ikari makes the pain of your own clockwork death worthwhile. But mostly you'd just like things to actually work out in the end. Just one time is all it would take; you're really not asking for all that much, are you?

You look up at the glimmering red panels of Seele bearing down on you, their voices in monotone and saying the same things they've been saying for years. You barely hear them over the rushing of your own thoughts as they center around the image of blue, blue eyes and the promise of another chance.

You won't hurt him this time. You won't leave him behind any longer.

::

One thing always remains constant no matter the timeline – your love for Shinji Ikari outweighs any other feeling you've ever experienced in all your life.

When he arrives, the boy is scared, and he is confused, and he is beautiful. You decide to play something light and pretty on the piano to welcome him, and the sound reaches his ears just as you knew it would. This isn't the first time you've greeted him this way, but this time, you are softer, less wayward and coarse. (Your first timeline was always your most embarrassing, upon reflection. And you have had a long time to reflect.)

When Shinji looks down, you look up, right on time. Your eyes meet. You smile, and he looks as though he doesn't know what to do with his face. It's endearing, lovely, wonderful. Familiar.

You remain outwardly calm as water as he walks by overhead and looks away from you, his face nervous and shy. But he doesn't look afraid of you. You don't notice the trembling of your fingers until you press the wrong key on the piano and throw the whole song out of limbo; you can only hope Shinji didn't hear.

::

_He's not going to be happy about this._ The words loop round and round in your mind as Gendo Ikari stands solemn and statuesque before the two of you, speaking of Evas and how, when the time comes, Shinji will join you in piloting one.

You stare at him, drinking in his every detail, even the painful ones. The boy's face contorts into something anguished and hateful at his father's words, and he's calling out for him with a desperation that makes your stomach hurt. Still, you smile at him. You will always smile at him. Because that pain can be helped; never erased, never forgotten, but _helped_. The aching lines of this poor boy's body can be smoothed and touched and eased. This is only the beginning. This is your chance.

::

The stars have aligned to bring Shinji to this exact place: sitting sheepishly on the piano bench beneath the warm glow of sunlight, looking for all the world as if his hands are too big and clumsy to touch anything without breaking it. You want to tell him how small and delicate his hands truly are, how he can create beautiful things with them instead of forever hating himself for the damage they've caused, but instead, you lean in close behind him, guiding his hand, and say, "You just have to hit this key here."

Shinji visibly stiffens when you rest your chin atop his shoulder for a moment, but he doesn't move away. His hand is fragile and warm with slender, shaking fingers. For one hot moment, your control bends beneath the weight of your longing, and your eyes close, taking in every detail of this moment. You like being this close to him. You like feeling him react to you. But lightly, you must do this lightly, ease him into it. You've learned from your mistakes. (A flash of a memory: Shinji hyperventilating in his sleep, then you lying atop him and breathing into his mouth, then your entire body going warm when the contact turned into something else for you, then Shinji's make-believe shock and outrage, then your pain, your rejection, he crushes you in his hands - )

Shinji plays the right notes, though they're slow and unsure. When he looks to you for approval, you want to kiss his forehead, his cheeks, his mouth, but you tuck away that longing to sit beside him on the bench and join his broken playing with an elegant stream of notes that slip effortlessly beneath your fingertips. You encourage him, smile at him; you still want to kiss him, but that will have to wait. Lightly, lightly, do everything lightly. Take your time, he needs it.

Shinji is a fast learner. You make sure to tell him this, to remind him how worthy he is, and his face flushes so prettily at your words that something great and giddy rises up within you, pouring out of your fingertips and into the piano. The song swells higher and your heart pounds when Shinji's hand grazes yours. His eyes shine with embarrassment, but he keeps playing alongside you, keeping up the pace better than he even realizes himself. When you speak – _we're amazing together, aren't we_ – your voice is breathless with excitement, your body burning with energy, and Shinji, he_smiles_ at you.

It takes you hours to come down from your high, though the anticipatory tremors never quite leave your body all the way.

::

"And you are…?"

Shinji asks you this with such soft, honest eyes that it's almost as if it's the first time. To him, it is – but to you, this is always a milestone, always a moment in time that you'll remember upon waking in another cold coffin. A repeating chapter in this undying cycle of lives between you two – the first time you tell him your name.

"Kaworu Nagisa" slips like silk from your tongue, easy and unchanging, always constant for every loop. A flash of a memory: a bright orange sunset, sitting atop the crumbling angel statue, Ode to Joy, the shimmering lake, the exchange of names, Shinji's shy blush.

The second loop always hurts the most to think about. You do away with the thought just as quickly as it arrives. Best not to think about that now, not when Shinji is looking at you with those eyes and that smile that has kept you going for lifetimes.

::

He comes to you with embarrassed eyes and cute excuses, but the moment he begins playing, he lets himself go. You can feel his energy radiating beside you, his body heat, his excitement. He's a natural at this; his passion is something palpable in the air between you two as you sit side by side on the piano bench and make something beautiful.

Breathing heavily, he asks, "So if I want to improve the sound I'm making, what should I do?"

You glance at him out the corner of your eye. His face is flushed, eyes closed, mouth parted. Something hot happens to your blood and you pick up the pace of the song, challenging him with a breathless smile. He immediately falls into place with you without error. Your thigh is touching his; your hands brush together; you can hear him panting to keep up, but not once does he break the tempo or miss a note. He opens his eyes and looks at you, and the smile he gives is so honest and natural that you almost forget what you're doing, why you're here, or the fact that you've failed countless loops before this to bring even a shadow of that smile to his face. For one blissful moment, it's as if this is the one and only lifetime the two of you have, with no pain preceding or looming as a distant threat overhead. It's as if you, too, are wholly human.

He makes you feel human. Everyone else has made you feel like a monster, and then there's Shinji.

Realization dawns but a moment later at the sight of the choker around his neck, and you remember your position, your purpose, how many times it's taken you to get here.

"Doing it over and over," you say with a smile, "until it feels good enough to you."

::

A flash of a memory: the second loop, lying in your bed, Shinji on the floor. He tells you about his father. He tells you about the pain in his heart. He's so human, so unlike any other. You gaze at him in the dark and your heart soars when he turns to meet your eye. The words come out on their own, natural and warm: _I think I was born to meet you._

The memory fades; you're in the present. Shinji is lying beside you on the cool ground, here on the same level as you. This feels nice. It feels nice in a way that you haven't felt before. There have been so many loops, so many times in which one of you was exalted, where you were unbalanced and unequal despite the love, but this time is different. You're equals.

Shinji looks at the stars as if he's in love with them. It's so much easier for him to feel small and insignificant, he's always been that way. You wonder what he would say if you were to cave and tell him how he's the epicenter of your existence, how he takes up so much space in your heart, how he _is_ your heart and that is no small feat, but you don't. Instead you listen to him murmur his thoughts about the universe as you linger in between the present and the memories of the second loop. _I think I was born to meet you._

In the present, Shinji turns to look at you, and it all makes sense. There's no thought to it, no doubt, no question. _I really was_ –

" - born to meet you."

You swear that for a moment, something like recognition passes through Shinji's eyes as he looks back at you in the darkness. Is he remembering? No. Not possible. Just your imagination.

::

"That's right, I'm _scared!"_ Shinji is tense and shaking like a frightened fawn. His back is to you. You wish you could see his face.

It's natural to be afraid. He has every right to be. But even still, your expression takes a turn for the sorrowful as you stare at his trembling shoulders and wait for him to look at you. When he does, his eyes are so dark and sad that it takes everything you have in you not to reach out and pull him close, to protect him against the horror of his ignorance.

But you can't. He must learn. You love him too much to leave him in the dark, even if the light will pain him just as much.

"Do you want to know?" you ask, and just as you knew he would, Shinji says yes.

::

On the rickety blood-red steps, Shinji slips. You don't reach out for him. Not yet. He can keep going, he's stronger than he thinks he is. You walk into the thick mist of gusting winds that don't touch you, your hands in your pockets as you listen keenly for any sound that Shinji makes behind you. Ironic, you think, that he never asks you why he must protect his body in the heavy hazmat suit and you don't, but then again, Shinji has more pressing matters to worry about right now. And they're all waiting for him at the end of this stairway.

He calls out your name, and you're there in an instant, your help at the ready now that he's asked for it himself. The gray rush of clouds masks the effortless drift and float of your body up to where Shinji leans against the wall for support; but when the fog clears, he looks up at you with blue eyes gleaming behind a protective layer of glass, and he takes your hand with a small, nervous smile that makes it that much more daunting to have to break the news to him. _Please smile again after this, _you think even as you smile back at him. _Please don't let this destroy you. I'll fix everything, I promise, just please smile for me -_

::

And when you reveal the truth to him, he's horrified. As he hyperventilates, entrenched in denial, you speak of sin and redemption and hope, your words quiet over the sound of his screams.

It hurts, hearing him this petrified, seeing him shaking like a leaf about to crumble to the ground, but this isn't the end. You've spent fourteen years making this loop perfect. You'll heal everything. As long as all the right pieces fall into place as they should – _and they will, nothing can go wrong, no one can ruin this, no one could even dare try –_ there's nothing stopping you from forever with him, not like all the other times.

::

The choker is freed from Shinji's throat with the faintest touch of your fingertips. When he looks at you, tears streaming down his cheeks and lips trembling, it's as if he's just seen the face of God.

But you are no god, and neither is he. You are both weapons of mass terror, catalysts for an apocalypse, world-destroying vessels that these Lilim have feared since the dawn of time. _You're just like me_, you want to say, looking at him with an adoration that has only gotten stronger over each and every timeline. It rises up within you in a warm swell and you want to reach out and touch his bottom lip with the pad of your thumb, but your hand remains resting atop the bed a few inches away from his, so close, so equal.

You tell yourself you'll both have all the time in the world to touch after this is through and done with. Still, you burn for him. You've burned for him for so long.

He tells you you're amazing, but when such a thing is being said about you rather than him, you aren't quite sure what the word means.

::

Shinji's eyes are bright and brave in the minutes before entering the Eva. He steps into his plugsuit with the awkward grace of a deer, skinny and delicate, but every time you glance at him out the corner of your eye as you get changed, you see how certain he looks, how driven. If only you could shine a mirror before him. If only he could see himself as you see him now and always, courageous and brilliant even in the midst of his fragility.

"Kaworu," he says quietly, "do you ever…" He looks at you with a shy tilt of a smile and a shrug. "Do you ever, you know, get scared sometimes?"

You smile back at him, tucking your arm into one baggy sleeve of your plugsuit. "Everyone gets scared now and then," you say. "It's in how we handle that fear that differentiates us."

"And what scares you?"

_Losing you. Never making you happy. Waking up in another coffin. Dying not by your hand._

Shinji is still looking at you, and so you laugh and say, "We shouldn't talk about that right now."

Shinji nods and lets out an embarrassed little laugh as he pulls up the rest of his plugsuit. "Yeah, guess you're right…"

_I'll tell you someday,_ you think. _But not now. Any time but now._

::

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Shinji is aflame with a rage that shouldn't be there. He's determined in all the wrong ways. There's a horrible sinking in your stomach that only sinks lower and lower with every step the Eva takes, because it hits you in one awful rush that _something is wrong._

And then you see – these aren't the right spears. _These aren't the right spears._

The sinking within you goes lower down until all you can do is plead for Shinji to not go any further, but that fire, that misplaced determination, it drives him on forward and shuts you out until he can't hear you anymore. There is so much noise and movement coming from so many places and it makes your head spin and ache, and your heart threatens to burst free from your chest as dread and regret overcome it.

You've never felt such fear in all of your lives than when Shinji defies your pleas and pulls the spears – just as you've never felt such dread when you realize you've been tricked.

The first angel to the thirteenth. The beginning and the end truly are the same.

::

Everything moves very quickly. The world begins to crumble and corrode, and there are millions upon millions of screams as the souls of humanity rise up from the earth to melt within the red sky. You watch in muted horror as the reality of the situation begins to dawn on Shinji, his expression morphing into one of petrified shock as everything begins to break down.

The choker around your neck begins to heat up. And then you know. You understand. You're going to die.

Shinji can't know of your horror, your disappointment, your sudden and fiery loathing for his father who has pulled the strings behind your back to bring you to your grave and to destroy his son's life. Lightly, you must do everything lightly before this boy, even as your stomach ties itself into knots and your heart breaks. And so, even as he screams for you, you smile for him. Even as your mind races with doubts, your last words for him must be those of certainty, of hope. The glowing shards spin in closer to your throat and you speak of finding peace, your love pouring out of you while you still have a body to house it all. Shinji is crying. You don't like to see him cry. You don't like the people who make him cry, but now he's crying because of you. How many times have you hurt him like this? How many times has Shinji Ikari cried for your existence?

As the shards spin in closer with only seconds left, you let yourself say something you've never said to him before: "We will meet again."

The promise ring of the choker around your neck is set off. It happens so quickly that you feel nothing. Your body splatters against the glass that Shinji is pressed up against. He's screaming your name over and over again, and from some distant place that he can't see, you're watching with empty eyes as your entire physical being slithers down the glass in sickening streaks of red. Blood and brain matter, scraps of muscle and shards of bone, they all crash against the glass in a hideous chaos that means nothing to you. No doubt they will all be restored to you next time. Fail, redo. Fail, redo. Restart, redo, continue.

At least that's how it was before.

At least then, during the countless loops that have played out before this, you were able to die by Shinji's own doing. At least then, you had known of your own fate. At least then, you had asked for it, accepted it, worked around it with the knowledge that there would always be another chance for a better end.

But this time, you had hoped that this would be it. This time, you have been deceived.

Gendo Ikari has deceived you.

And you are _angry._

That raw, seething repulsion is the last thing you feel before the white cloud of your consciousness fades to black, and you are reborn. (Almost.)

::

Wake up. It's time to remember.

Another black coffin, cold and steely. You can feel the chill of it permeating through your bones and making you shake. You're naked and alone and disoriented as your eyes open to the sight of the heavy lid covering the icy box in which you lie.

You've lost count of how many times you've awoken to this scene. To bitter coldness rather than Shinji. To another loop, another infinite failure, another pointless chance.

You lie completely still, breathing slowly, waiting for the sick rush of memory to sweep over you. There's something burning in your chest and behind your eyes, the feel of it hot and stinging and foreign. Something about this feels different. Something inside of you feels unlike it ever has before, but the word for it won't come just yet. But it will.

You lie motionless for a few more moments before a sudden rage seizes you, spurring you to lift your leg and kick hard at the heavy, cold lid of the coffin. It clatters to the ground with a loud and graceless thud. The same red sky awaits you overhead. Its bloody stars laugh at you.

You stare at that red, red sky, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait – and then it hits you, everything, all at once in a mad rush that makes you feel like screaming.

Your vow to Shinji. Piloting the Eva together. The spears. Gendo Ikari. Seele. The thirteenth angel. The choker around your neck like a promise ring. The shards spinning closer and closer to your throat. Shinji's tears. He screams your name. Sudden and explosive noise. Blood, blood, blood as red as the sky above.

Your death. Your failure.

Fourteen years of crafting perfection, a fool-proof plan, Shinji's only hope – and here you are again at the start and end of it all.

Your death. Your failure.

Barely breathing, you sit upright and look down the endless row of coffins with vacant eyes. Something like a laugh is dragged out of your throat, low and hoarse and hollow. You raise a hand to cover your face, peeking out from between your fingers at the empty emblems that mark your every timeline – physical and frigid proofs of your death, your failure, you failed him, you failed him, _you failed him_ –

A low, horrible sound leaves your lips, something between a groan and a laugh. Your fingertips dig into the soft skin of your cheek as you begin to shake from the inside out. The row of coffins glitter hideously in the red moonlight; your eyes remain fixed on them as your fingertips flutter to touch your throat. They come back bloody, but when you blink, the blood is gone. Your heart pounds painfully hard in your chest, and when you open your mouth again, you mean to say Shinji's name, but something else comes out instead.

It's only after the fog over your mind clears that you realize you're screaming.


	2. erupting earth, exploding sky

**the earth is (not) a cold dead place**

::

_1. between an erupting earth and an exploding sky_

::

Red earth. Red sky. Red world. Red blood on Shinji's hands. He blinks and the blood is gone.

Asuka is a dim flame beneath the hazy, deadened glow of the sky above. She stomps rather than walks, but there's a tiredness to her that hadn't been there before; the lines of her face have hardened, once pretty and now rough, and every time Shinji sees her look at him, there are daggers in her eyes. And they're pointing right at him, gleaming and ready to cut.

Either way, Shinji doesn't care. He doesn't care about the dry earth beneath his feet or Asuka's bitter glances or the bloody sky overhead. The world around him moves in slow motion. He feels nothing and everything all at once.

The only thing he feels for is Kaworu. Everything else can rot.

He looks down at his hands. His fingers drip with blood. He blinks and the blood is gone.

"Come on, keep up." Asuka's voice is hoarse and ragged from battle, and her hand is rough and forceful as she takes Shinji's arm and drags him along. Shinji's body moves on auto-pilot, his movements heavy and clumsy from the delirium. He moves because he's told to. He does everything because he's told to.

A flash of a memory: piloting the Eva, rescuing Rei, Misato's voice, _"Do this because it's what _you_ want!"_

"Four-eyes got hurt back there," Asuka says suddenly, her voice low and shaking. Her shoulders are very tense as she walks. "I didn't see the full damage. But I don't need to see it to know it's bad."

Shinji stares at the ground, barely recognizing her words as a language he understands. All the while, he's piloted by Asuka with one tight hand wrapped around his arm so tightly that it hurts.

"The stupid thing doesn't even cry out when she's hurt," Asuka hisses. "She just smiles like it's nothing. And I hate it." She squeezes Shinji's arm tighter for one tense moment before glancing at him over her shoulder, coming to a stop. The red flash of her hair blows in the dry breeze, the blue of her eye cutting out brightly from beneath her dirty bangs. "So how does it feel, huh?" she asks, her voice an eerily quiet murmur, something so calm it's almost violent. "Knowing that you hurt more people with your stupidity?"

Shinji slowly lifts his head to blink helplessly at her. He sways on his feet, unable to bring his eyes to focus on anything. The longer he tries, the more it looks as though Asuka's form is being stripped away into muscle and bone, her skin dropping away from her body and leaving her a slow-melting skeleton in the sun. He blinks and she's back to normal.

"Who knows how many people you just killed," she says quietly. Her nails dig into Shinji's wrist; her teeth are sharp. "Could have been millions for all we know. Billions, even. Wouldn't you like that?"

Shinji blinks at her again, soundless, sightless.

"So who'd you do it for this time?" Asuka steps closer to him, still gripping him tightly. "If it wasn't the doll girl, then who was it? Who else would you fuck everything up for like this _again_?"

Her voice is drowned out over the rushing in Shinji's ears. He whispers Kaworu's name like a broken hymn beneath his breath as his legs give out from under him, and doesn't stop chanting it even when Asuka jerks him up painfully by the arm so that he stands slumped and limp from her hand like a dead man from a noose. "What?!" she snaps. "What is it, what do you want?"

Shinji just keeps whispering Kaworu's name, the only thing still tethering him to reality.

"What the hell do you want from me, dammit?!" Asuka's voice cracks, but she masks it with more anger, just as she does with everything else. "You won't walk on your own, you won't look at me, you won't do anything to help yourself! What is it you want?!"

And Shinji sways on his feet and whispers Kaworu's name, the answer to every question in the world he's ever had.

Asuka shakes from head to toe, her teeth bared, her face sharp and inhuman in the glaring sunlight. Shinji can hear her seething, can feel her anger radiating off of her in hot little pulses, but he doesn't care. She can strike him or scream at him all she wants. He won't stop her.

But instead, she lets go of his arm and lets him fall to the ground, red dirt puffing up around him and making his throat hurt when he breathes in. "Walk on your own, I don't care anymore," Asuka grumbles, turning on her heel and walking on ahead. "Shouldn't have even cared from the start…"

Shinji remains crumpled on the ground, not caring if he were to disintegrate and become dirt himself. He doesn't know how long he lies there before Asuka returns to pull him back up to his feet, mumbling words he can't understand and roughly brushing the dust from his plugsuit. Shinji's knees are wobbling so hard that he half-collapses against her, and Asuka lets out a mix between a scoff and a growl, the sound of it like that of an animal. But when she speaks, it's not to him.

"Hey!" she shouts over Shinji's shoulder. "Are you gonna keep lagging behind like that or are you gonna keep up with us?"

Shinji's eyes widen as he turns his head to see who she's talking to. The dark sliver of Rei stands at a distance, looking like an omen amidst the red earth. But Shinji knows with a sick swelling in his chest that this isn't the Rei he knows. This isn't the Rei he tried to save. When he opens his mouth to say so, nothing but a winded groan comes out, the sound of it ugly, raw, weak. Asuka tells him to shut up and he does only because he lacks the breath and the will to try again.

"You kids seem to really enjoy just cropping up out of nowhere after fourteen years of being as good as dead," Asuka spits out, grabbing hold of Shinji's arm to lead him again. "You just leave us all to rot in this godforsaken place and then you come back whenever you feel like it and then you_ fuck_everything up again."

_I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to. I want Kaworu back. I didn't mean to._

"They're gonna keep you under lockdown if you come with us," Asuka calls back to the motionless shadow of not-quite-Rei. "You're an idiot if you think for five seconds they're just gonna let you waltz on in after so long of being M.I.A."

Shinji hears Asuka let out a little laugh. It sounds like a snarl, all teeth and spit. "But hey," she mutters, her glance at Shinji electric and feral. "At least you'll have some company."

In that moment, even in the midst of his delirium, Shinji knows exactly where they're going. He wonders how long it will be before they kill him. Another choker? Maybe they'll shoot him. Poison him. Crush him. Behead him. (A flash of a memory? Kaworu? No.) Whichever method they choose, he hopes it comes soon.

They walk on. Rei doesn't catch up with them.

::

WILLE is unnervingly quiet when they arrive. Shinji doesn't look at anyone, but everyone looks at him. He can feel their eyes boring into him as he's placed in a wheelchair and pushed down the long corridor to a room he's never been before. It takes every bit of energy he has to turn and look at who's pushing him. The friendly albeit frazzled face of Sakura Suzuhara smiles shakily at him. Shinji doesn't smile back.

"How are you feeling, Shinji?" Sakura asks him, immediately cringing at her question. "I-I'm sorry, that's probably a silly question…but I'm sure you'll feel better once we get you all cleaned up, and then you can rest a little, and – "

"Good luck getting him to say anything," Asuka says from behind. "He's a vegetable now. Completely useless."

Shinji keeps staring at Sakura without seeing her. Where's Toji? Did he kill him too? Is that more blood on his hands? He watches as Sakura's face begins to melt into hideous strings of flesh and dripping muscle, leering at him with her skull exposed and her eyes bleeding. He blinks and she's back to normal.

"Um…" Sakura looks at him nervously before turning her attention straight ahead of her, her smile awkward and forced. "Misato won't be in to talk to you for a while, so you can have some time to yourself beforehand! Isn't that good?"

Misato?

He doesn't want to see Misato.

Shinji closes his eyes again and drowns out all the noises of existence. He curls up into a ball in the wheelchair and whispers Kaworu's name again until he drops off into a state of half-sleep that's only broken when he's eased out of the wheelchair and stretched out on a hard, scratchy cot. Sakura is saying something, but he doesn't hear her. She leans in and asks again, a little louder. "Shinji, do you need help getting out of your plugsuit?" She clears her throat. "I can turn away if you…um, if you don't want me to see anything, I mean."

Shinji stares at her. Her eyes are bleeding again, her skull gleaming and white. He closes his eyes and turns away to lie on his side so that his back is to her. Sakura gives a little cough and stands up, placing a nightgown on the mattress next to Shinji's folded legs. Her voice is soft when she says, "I'll just, um…leave you be for now, okay? I'll come back in when you're ready."

Shinji hears her walk over to the door before she stops, pausing in silence for a moment. When she speaks, she sounds terribly sad. "Shinji? I…I want you to know that it's going to be alright. Maybe not right now, but…soon it will be. Things are bad right now but they won't stay like this. I'm sure of that. So…please trust me a little, if you can."

A few more silent moments pass before Sakura leaves and closes the door behind her. Shinji keeps his eyes closed. He's too afraid of what he'll see if he opens them.

::

Shinji isn't sure how much time passes before the door opens again. But it's not Sakura who comes in.

The arriver closes the door with a hard shove, and then there's quiet. Shinji feels himself being stared at as the hairs on the back of his neck stand upright. Then there are footsteps, hard, clacking footsteps of heeled boots hitting the cold floor. When a hand touches Shinji's shoulder, he nearly whips around to bite its fingers off, until he sees the face of the person standing above him.

It's Misato.

She opens her mouth to say something, but closes it immediately after. Her face doesn't look like her own anymore. Her youth has been sucked dry and replaced with something cold, something Shinji doesn't recognize anymore. The brim of her hat casts a heavy shadow over her face so that her eyes can't be seen. Her mouth is a thin, serious line that neither smiles or frowns.

Shinji looks up at her, this woman he once trusted, and he feels fear.

Misato draws a long breath through her nose and expels it slowly. She drops her hand away from Shinji's shoulder, looking off to the left. "Are you going to get changed? Or do you want to stay in that plugsuit forever?"

It takes Shinji a long time to respond, and when he does, his voice is barely there at all. "I want to die."  
"That's not an answer."

"I want to die."

Misato curses beneath her breath and seizes Shinji by the shoulders to sit him upright. She deactivates the plugsuit with a firm press of the button on Shinji's hand and yanks the baggy thing off his shoulders. Shinji lets himself be pulled this way and that as she undresses him, not even caring of his nudity once the plugsuit is taken off. Misato reaches for the nightgown and pulls it roughly over his head, breathing heavily, cursing with every movement. "Do you have any idea what hell you've put me through?" she asks, fierce and coarse.

Shinji closes his eyes. They feel wet. "I want to die."

"Too fucking bad. I won't let you."

Shinji's arms are pulled through the nightgown's sleeves, the rest of the fabric gathering around his bare thighs. Misato is still holding him by his shoulders even after he's fully covered, her head bowed, her body shaking. Shinji stares at the dark crown of her head and wonders why she hasn't killed him yet. What's stopping her? She could strangle him right now, wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze the life out of him. And yet she just holds his shoulders so tightly that her knuckles wash out to white and says, "You've put me through…so much shit, Shinji…"

"Then just kill me," Shinji says in monotone.

"That's not what I meant, god dammit!" Misato slams Shinji down onto the mattress so roughly that the cot springs groan in protest. Shinji lets her. Maybe she'll kill him now. "Do you think I _wanted_ you to die when that choker was put on you? Do you think I wanted _any_ of this?"

"I don't know."

"How do you think it was for me spending fourteen years knowing you could end the world if you wanted to? Not even knowing if you'd ever come back at all? Knowing you'd never have a chance to be Shinji again?!"

"I don't know."

Misato glares down at him with a desperation that Shinji has never seen from her before. Her eyes well up with tears, but Shinji doesn't flinch when they drip down onto his face. Misato is quick to wipe them away from her eyes with the back of her hand as she stands up and turns away from him, taking a deep breath that shakes on its exhale. "I'll be back later for your questioning," she says on a low, flat line before walking stiffly over to the door and leaving the room.

Shinji reaches up to touch his wet cheeks with his fingertips. He can't tell whose tears are whose, but he wipes them off on the back of his arm anyway. His body feels chilled and bare beneath the nightgown, his slender legs exposed to the cold, stale air of the holding room. He's just about to grab the edge of the blanket beneath him when suddenly something in the air changes, something so small that it's almost not there at all. But Shinji can feel it, and it makes his entire body flush hot with anticipation as he's suddenly rendered unable to move.

And then he hears it.

A voice.

Everything comes to a sudden halt. Barely breathing, Shinji turns his eyes up to the ceiling as his heart thumps hard and fast in his chest.

When he hears it again, it's not just a voice. It's a scream. And that scream is Kaworu's.

Shinji's body begins to shake violently as his eyes open wide, stinging with tears. His frantic hands rise to clasp over his mouth as a rush of dizziness zips through him and makes his head spin. Kaworu's name falls from his lips in a delirious, breathless plea, soft and quiet over the sound of Kaworu's anguished scream echoing in his ears. With a gasp, Shinji scrambles off the cot and stands in the middle of the room on wobbling legs, reaching up to the ceiling. A euphoric desperation unlike anything he's ever felt before overcomes him and breaks free from his body in a shuddering shout of Kaworu's name. He hits the floor on his knees, mindless of the pain that shoots up through his legs. A hot stream of tears drips down his cheeks as he cries out, "Kaworu! I'm here! I'm still here! Come to me, come back to me, please, I'm here waiting for you…!"

::

Misato makes her way down the hallway with an expression fixed and cold as a gravestone. Her gaze doesn't stray from its pointed spot directly ahead of her, and the only sound to be heard is the hard clack of her boot heels against the floor.

Shinji's dead eyes haunt her memory.

It's hard to believe he's still the same boy who once lived under her roof. Then again, she thinks, it's even harder to believe she's still the same person she was all those years ago, back when she teased her hair and painted her lips and actually smiled. This new and cold world has changed them all, turned them into machines, splintered but not broken them. She thinks perhaps being broken would be easier; being splintered leaves too much hope for reparation that never comes. She briefly wonders if any of these other people ever cling onto their old selves like she does, but the thought is quickly disposed of. She's already tired enough, and memories always hurt.

She makes her way to the main room, which is empty save for Ritsuko who sits tiredly in her desk chair, her chin propped up on her hand as she oscillates back and forth. "He's lost it," she says, her eyes fixed on the camera footage reeling from Shinji's holding room. Her voice is that of mild annoyance intermingling with an unspoken line of _I'm too tired for this right now. _ "He's absolutely lost it."

Misato's eyes are still stinging when she asks, "What are you talking about?"

"Have a look for yourself." Ritsuko wheels away from the desk to give Misato room to see the camera feed on the one of many computers lined up before her. "And to think you haven't even questioned him yet. What held you back?"

Misato shoots her a cold glare for one tense moment before she turns her attention to the camera feed. She sees the grainy image of Shinji crumpled on the floor, his arms reaching up to the ceiling, his words spluttering and wild. _"You told me you loved me that night, remember? I remember! I remember now! I remember everything!"_

"I knew the boy was broken," Ritsuko says from behind the smog of her cigarette, "but this is certainly a new development. A psychotic break."

Misato remains quiet in grave and heavy contemplation as she watches Shinji through the computer. She can feel Ritsuko's eyes on her, calculating and processing and all the more like a machine than her mother ever was. All the while, Shinji keeps sobbing and crying out and babbling words that seem to only make sense to him. _"You really meant it when you said we'd meet again! You weren't lying, you didn't betray my feelings this time! You're coming back to me, you're coming back to me – "_

"I can't watch this," Misato mumbles, turning away from the computer screen.

"We could always tranquilize him," Ritsuko suggests, her voice dry and uninspired as she cuts the sound on the camera feed. "It would certainly be quieter around here then."

"Shut the fuck up, Ritsuko."

Ritsuko seems unaffected by the scathing remark as she fishes out a carton of cigarettes and a lighter from her coat pocket. She offers the carton to Misato, who gives an irritated shake of her head as she rubs her sore temples with the pads of her thumbs. Ritsuko offers again. "It'll settle your nerves."

"Doubt it."

Ritsuko shrugs as she sets a cigarette between her lips and lights it up, breathing in deep. The carton and lighter are pocketed in the oversized coat hanging over her lanky frame. When she speaks, it's on a cloud of smoke. "You've never turned down a smoke before. Was it really that bad?"

"Don't pull the ignorance card with me," Misato mutters, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "You knew Shinji long before any of this. You knew what he was like."

Ritsuko taps the loose cigarette ashes directly onto the floor. "We're certainly hard-pressed to pretend otherwise. The moment he initiated Near-Third Impact he might as well have become a stranger to the world."

Misato grits her teeth. She's been pretending for fourteen long years and it still hasn't made a scrap of difference. Her chest burns and she turns away from Ritsuko with a scoff, covering her mouth with one gloved hand to keep from saying something she'll regret.

"Seems like this is the golden age for ghosts, isn't it," Ritsuko says before taking another long drag of her cigarette, exhaling languidly and sinking lower into her chair. "This is the second time he was supposed to die, and yet here he is. He's like a messiah."

"Don't even joke about that."

Ritsuko tips her ashes onto the floor again, smiling coldly. "Who said I was joking?"

Misato stares at her for a long time, wordless and nauseous as ten different screens of Shinji Ikari glow back at her in the fuzzy, flickering light.

::

The medical crew is taking their sweet old time telling Asuka a word's worth of anything, and frankly, she's pissed. For half an hour she sits on the floor just outside the medic's door, her face stony and her eyes dark; it's only once she feels ready to jump out of her own skin that she's finally admitted into Mari's room by a skittish-looking nurse whose name Asuka hasn't cared enough to commit to memory.

And even as the door swings shut behind her, leaving her and Mari the only two in the room, she still doesn't know what exactly it is she's doing here.

It only takes a quick look-over to see that Mari is in a much better condition than the vision Asuka's imagination had provided. She looks strange in the garish nightgown the nurse has dressed her in, and it's with a little wave of nausea that Asuka realizes it's the same sort of nightgown Shinji had worn upon awakening. On the small table by the bed sits her glasses and a small Styrofoam cup of water; in her right arm is an IV hooked up to a half-empty bag of fluid, dripping slow and steady. Her face is bruised and littered with scratches and scrapes, but one long cut along her left cheekbone has been neatly stitched up. Her hair is untied and splays like a dark drape along the white pillow.

It's only when Asuka clears her throat that Mari gives the faintest hint of a smirk, her eyes still closed. "Ooh, is that the princess I hear?" she asks, her voice quiet and hoarse. When she laughs, it's laced with a cough. "I'm so honored. I'd kiss your feet but I can't really, like, move much, you know?"

Asuka thinks to tell her to shut up, but the words just won't come. Her chest feels heavy and her hands tighten into knots at her sides as she stays firmly rooted in place by the door. "Open your eyes," is all she says.

"Mm? Do they enchant you, mademoiselle?"

"No. You just look dead with them closed."

"Guess that makes me a talking corpse. That'd be kinda cute." Mari opens her eyes and turns to look at Asuka, wincing a little at the movement of her neck. Asuka feels sick. "There we go, milady. Better?"

Not really. Mari doesn't look like herself with all those bandages, those stitches, those bruises. She's not supposed to look so vulnerable. And that isn't supposed to bother Asuka so much but it _does_, and for reasons she'd much rather not contemplate, not now and not ever.

"Stupid Shinji's back," she says instead, choosing anger over care. It's such an easy feeling, something she's so used to that it's almost like coming home when that flare of charged heat rises up within her chest again. "He's in a holding room right now waiting for questioning. But it's useless."

"Useless?" Mari's smirk is back as she struggles to sit upright. "He's got more in him than you think. Nearly ending the world twice, that takes talent."

"Talent?" Asuka spits the word out like something sour. "He's a fucking fool."

"All living things are fools," Mari says casually. When she reaches over to the table for her glasses, she seizes up in a gasp of pain and goes completely still, her eyes squeezing shut. Asuka doesn't realize she's hurrying over to the bedside until she's suddenly standing right there, taking Mari's glasses in hand and holding them hard enough for the lenses to shatter. For a moment, Mari just opens her eyes and blinks up at her, her expression unreadable; it's only when Asuka huffs out a breath and slides the glasses onto the girl's bruised face that Mari cracks a smile, back to normal. "Not every day I get the royal treatment," she says lowly. "You're supposed to be the princess, not me."

Asuka rolls her eyes and steps back to lean against the wall, looking down at the floor. "And you're supposed to be the four-eyes, so."

They both go quiet. Asuka can feel Mari's eyes on her. She opens her mouth to say something – _stop looking at me, stop reading my mind, stop knowing everything –_

And that's when the alarm goes off. It rings out in the hallway and echoes into the medical room, and Asuka jerks her head up, her eyes wide and her heartbeat kicking into overdrive. There are many voices coming from outside the door as personnel rush down the hall, but their words climb on top of each other and are unable to be picked out.

But Asuka can feel it tugging deep at her core, making her nerves jump and her blood turn hot. The last shreds of humanity within her switch over into something else as her senses become hyperaware and keen. And then, in a flash, she senses it, and there's no mistake.

It's an AT field.

::

You can feel Shinji's pain.

You can hear him calling out your name.

You can sense your soul being pulled back into the universe in which you left him. Every nerve and thought and emotion centers around him as your screams die down into hushed gasps, sobered by the distant sound of Shinji's voice echoing in your mind.

He can feel you.

He wants you back.

Something within you lifts up and jolts your spirit back to life. You rise up out of your coffin and stand tall, your body buzzing with energy and heat. Shinji's name sighs past your lips and revives you. Silent and staid, you reach for the white shroud of silk that covers the fallen lid of the coffin; it feels cool and soft against your skin as you drape it around your body, covering what's bare. Your every movement is slow and smooth like honey.

With Shinji's name a sweet whisper on your tongue, you turn your eyes to the sky and give one final smile. The bloody stars above aren't laughing this time.


	3. welcome, ghosts

**the earth is (not) a cold dead place**

::

_2. welcome, ghosts_

::

You're falling through the sky. Your body bends and shifts and is melted and reshaped over and over again before all of your heated pieces come back together one by one. The sky almost swallows you whole, but you fight against its pull and will yourself back into tangibility, pushing through the pain with eyes closed. This is a familiar feeling, a feeling you know inside and out – but this time, something is different.

This time, there's no redoing. You're going back. You're going back to the Shinji you left behind.

::

Rei Ayanami stands alone amidst blood-red wreckage, a pair of earphones dangling from around her wrist. A dry breeze blows through her hair and covers her eyes, but her thoughtful, quiet expression doesn't falter. Her heartbeat thumps slow and steady, her pulse a patient thrum at the base of her throat. Proof of being alive. Proof of owning the body she's in. But something is off. What is it? What is it?

Her faraway gaze is focused on the space that Shinji Ikari once occupied. She hasn't been able to take a single step forward since Second called out to her, asking of her purpose, where she's going, will she follow them? Rei remembers now in an effortless search of her memory (her mind, _her_ mind, is this mind truly hers?) the sight of Ikari's helpless body hobbling brokenly at the other pilot's side, strung up like a marionette by the girl's hand. Like a puppet – a doll? No. Ikari is not a doll and neither is Rei. Rei Ayanami. Is that truly her name? She doesn't know. She doesn't know. (But somewhere, lingering just beyond the borders of her conscience, she can feel it: the answer she's been waiting for, having wracked her every hazy, disjointed memory for some sort of sign to point her in the right direction. And it's there, it's there, just beyond her periphery, so very close. But she can't quite reach it all the way, not yet…)

Something in her mind ticks, and she blinks with a start, narrowing her eyes to look off into the distance. Her gaze is pointed and focused, in search of something. When it doesn't come to her, she blinks again and looks back down at the black device in her palm. This device feels familiar; it echoes with a faint energy that she knows on some hidden plane of her mind, but the memories correlating with it are foggy and indistinct. She experimentally places one of the earphones into her ear and waits a moment, unsure if she should press play or not.

A red mist begins to gather in the distance, and Rei swears she feels a chill in the air. Driven by some breath of boldness, she presses play, and some acoustic radio song from many years ago sings into her ear. A familiar song, though she can't recall where she might have heard it before. A time long ago. Another life, another body. Gendo Ikari?

The red mist gathers thicker until it appears as a bloody fog. Rei stares at it with eyes just as red and listens as the song cuts out into silence. The tape continues to spin slowly, but only static plays on, a dull crackle in her ear. As the mist continues to thicken, swirling atop the dusty earth like something alive, Rei hears the crackling bleed into sound again – the sound of a piano. It's a pretty sound, hopeful and airy, and Rei almost finds it unnerving to listen to what with the dead world stretching out around her on all sides. She listens on, the other earphone swaying like a pendulum from her wrist.

Something much like surprise, although diluted, rises up in her when she gets the vague sense of who exactly is playing this song. (Red eyes, just like hers. He always smiled at her like he knew something she didn't. Even his name stirred within her something unsettling, something like a home she didn't know how to return to, a truth she didn't know how to shoulder.)

The red mist begins to shiver. Rei can't see through it, nor look away from it.

The song begins to pick up speed, and Rei hears a few notes fall out of order, the sound of it clumsy and gauche. Rei would always hear him playing that piano; the water-light sounds of it would ring all throughout the decayed buildings so that she could hear him no matter where she was. But not once did she ever hear him make a mistake. Not once did his song ever fall out like this.

Through the earphone, Nagisa seems to try and get back into the song as best as he can, but there's a tension in his playing that hadn't been been there before. Rei furrows her brow in mild disturbance as she keeps listening. This isn't the Nagisa she knew. This isn't the strange, ethereal boy with the smile that made her question things and the voice that reminded her of some exalted place high above the sky. The red mist shifts and collects, growing and swelling with energy, and Rei is waiting for something to come out of it.

Within moments, the song falls apart like something tumbling down from a very high height, left to crash brokenly on the ground with one horrible clash of keys and flat notes that don't meld together in pretty ways anymore. It's an ugly, heavy sound, like death, like failure. Rei winces at it, alarmed. She can hear heavy, unsteady breathing and the faint sound of what Rei thinks might be crying. And suddenly she knows in a moment's clarity that this tape is accidental, that Ikari was never meant to hear this song, and the realization that someone like Nagisa, with his sleepy eyes and his strange smile, made such a mistake as to forget to delete the recording is so striking to her that she has to press stop on the tape with a franticness she didn't know she was capable of. She feels nauseous and confused as she pulls the earphone out of her ear and clutches the music player tightly in her hand, so tightly that her knuckles sting and turn white.

She looks upon the red cloud with fear, and also with expectation. There's no secret anymore as to what will be birthed from that red. If she can return time and time again after her own deaths, then…

The ground beneath her shakes with a cold tremor as the mist clears to reveal a thin body draped in a white tatter. The boy faces away from Rei, his head tilted up to the sky, his arms loose at his sides. The white cloth draped around his body flutters in the dusty wind as he slumps over into himself, the sharp planes of his shoulder blades shifting like a tiger's beneath his skin as he breathes in slow, deep shudders. He clenches his hands into trembling fists before shaking them out. When he straightens, those sharp shoulder blades shift at the arch of his back, and the pale mess of his hair falls away from his face at the backwards tip of his head. He half-turns, his head lolling to the side, and his red eyes find Rei within moments.

The sunlight pours down on him in hot, shivering streaks, and Kaworu Nagisa is at once terrifying and beautiful.

They stare at each other in silence for an unprecedented amount of time before Nagisa breathes out a sound that Rei thinks might be a laugh; it's hoarse and rough and like that of an animal, whatever it is, and the sound of it makes Rei shiver a little. "I'm not really surprised," Nagisa says, "that I'd end up arriving somewhere close to _you, _what with our connection..."

Rei doesn't want to know what he means by that. His words make her feel uneasy; there's still that sense of familiarity in his presence that she can't figure out just yet.

"This has never happened before, though." Nagisa turns his eyes back up to the sky, his silver bangs fanning over his face so that only the crooked arc of his smile shows. "The loop didn't reset…I wonder, I wonder what let me return this time…?"

Rei stares at him for a few moments longer before looking down at the music player in her hand. "Ikari," she says softly, simply. "That's why you returned."

"Shinji is why I've always come back to this world," Nagisa laughs out with that strange animal laugh again. His eyes are glowing, burning and bright. "But I've become bored with starting over from scratch. I'd been so close this last time, what would be the point in redoing it from the beginning…?"

Rei watches with a detached sort of alarm as Nagisa's gaze drops to the ground, his eyes wide, his smile faltering and falling flat. Something inside of him is unhinged, Rei can feel it. But then, she remembers the piano song recorded onto the tape in her hand and suddenly that hollow look in his eyes makes sense. "I retrieved this for him," she says, holding out the black device for Nagisa to see. "He reached for it as though it was important, so I picked it up. I need to return it to him."

After the recollection settles in, Nagisa's eyes suddenly look so sad that even Rei feels the impact of it strike her cold in her bones. "Thank you," he says quietly. "It's very important to him."

"I listened to the tape." Rei takes a few steps toward him, and Nagisa follows suit, stepping closer as well and eyeing her with an expression she can't read. "Did you mean to erase it?"

Nagisa is silent for a beat before that strange quirk of a smile touches the corner of his mouth. It looks heavy, tired. "I hadn't decided yet."

"Decided what?"

That sad look in the boy's eyes is back. It makes Rei uncomfortable; she never knows what to do when people are sad. "Whether or not I wanted him to know about me," he says, staring down at the ground with hollow eyes. "About all of our times together."

Rei blinks at him, not understanding.

"That song you heard me playing, it's a song that Shinji wrote a few lifetimes ago." Nagisa closes his eyes, his head lolling to the side again as if it's too heavy for him to hold up. "I thought perhaps by recording it for him to hear when he was ready, then he would remember and understand…but…" Nagisa's laugh is a little more than a puff of breath as a pale hand flutters up to touch at his throat. A thin line of red blooms beneath his skin at his touch, spanning all around his throat in a jagged line. It vanishes when he drops his hand away, leaving nothing but pale, unmarred skin once more. "I've already brought him enough pain, haven't I?"

Is this a question for Rei to answer, or is he speaking to himself? Rei doesn't know. She isn't good at this. Her reactions are awkward and soundless, her body still and stiff as she stares at him and waits for him to go on.

"Besides," Nagisa adds, "I can't play it like he did. I tried for fourteen years and could never get it right. It couldn't go on without him any more than I could."

At this, the boy turns on his heel and begins walking off, his every step measured and light. Rei still thinks he moves like a tiger, graceful but hungry. "I'm going to find Gendo Ikari," Nagisa says, his voice suddenly rough and ugly. "I know where he is. If you want to know the truth that you seek, you should come with me."

"The truth…?" The words spark within Rei a sort of hope that she can't grasp all the way just yet. But it's there, and it _means _something, it just _has _to.

Nagisa glances over his shoulder at her, his eyes gleaming and lucid. "You listened to the tape on your own volition, didn't you?"

Rei nods.

Nagisa smiles, and the look of it is like the sound of glass breaking. "That's good. It wasn't an order from anyone, so you did it because you wanted to. You should do that more often." He turns back around, the rugged tatter of his white shroud slipping off of one sharp shoulder as he walks. Rei watches him in quiet contemplation for a few moments before finding her resolve and catching up to his side. If going with him will bring her to answers, then she will follow him; she will follow him across this dead red land as long as it takes for this whispering in her mind and soul to finally be hushed.

::

WILLE is in a state of chaos.

Shinji's holding room is broken into by a force of three, and Misato can hear the shouts and bangs ringing out in the halls as she runs as fast as her legs will carry her. They're throwing punches and pinning the boy to the floor, their eyes enraged like animals, and Misato is screaming at them to stop before she even realizes what she's saying. "Get the fuck off of him! _Get the fuck off of him, now!"_

"This fucking kid is gonna kill us all!" Aoba shouts. "We should have executed him when we had the chance!"

Shinji is sobbing, and the words he's screaming out seem to only make sense to him as he huddles into a tight ball on the floor, covering his head with his shaking arms. "I still need to see him – I want to see him again – don't kill me before I can see him again!"

Misato hisses out something vicious beneath her breath before her gun is pulled at the ready, pointing it directly at Aoba's head. He looks back at her, blazing and unrecognizable, still pinning Shinji's shoulders roughly to the ground. "How many times will it take, Misato?! How many more times will this kid nearly end the world before you man up and – "

"Tell me to 'man up' again," Misato growls, "and I'll shoot."

Aoba's expression darkens. His grip on Shinji's shoulders doesn't lessen.

"Attacking a fourteen-year-old boy in his holding room, thinking there won't be anyone to stop you?" Misato's laugh is little more than a snarl. "What a fucking 'man' you are."

"You were the one who issued the DSS choker in the first place," one of the other men says, but Misato's eyes remain fixed on Aoba. "What right do you have to defend your own position?"

"It's true, I have no right," Misato quips. Her teeth are a white flash when she smiles again, a shadow crossing her face as she grips her gun tighter and focuses her aim. "But if you think that'll stop me, you must not know me very well."

The room goes silent, save for Shinji's inane whispering and messy weeping. Misato's aim doesn't falter in the slightest when she says, "Let him go. I'll handle him myself."

Aoba barks out a laugh. "And do what? Put another useless collar on him?"

Misato switches off the safety from her gun.

The three men get the point well enough and are out of the room in moments. The door is slammed behind them as they leave, and the shivering heap of Shinji jumps a little at the sound. Misato remains where she is for a few motionless beats before slowly lowering her gun and pocketing it back into its holster strapped around her hips. "Shinji," she says, solemn and flat, "who is it that you want to see again?"

She doesn't expect him to answer, and he lives up to the assumption when all he does is shake and clutch at his hair, whispering to himself. Misato watches him helplessly as something much like hatred begins to swell in her chest. (But it's not hate, it could never be hate, she could _never _hate this boy, and god knows she's had to try harder than anyone else to come even close to that for all these fucking years – )

"Come on," she says, hoisting Shinji up and dragging him alongside her. "Don't go limp on me. I'm not going to carry you. Walk."

Shinji whispers something with a question mark looming at the end of it, and Misato leans down closer to him, demanding for those words to be heard. Shinji repeats them, his eyes wide and fixed on the floor. "Why did you save me…?"

Misato stares down at him for a long time, her thoughts racing. She can't answer him. All these thoughts and yet none of them make it to the front of her mind to speak aloud. She grits her teeth and grips Shinji's wrist harder, tugging him close to her side to cover him as she opens the door and looks out into the hallway. The coast is clear, but they'll have to move quickly. "I'm taking you somewhere else," Misato says, closing the door behind them as quietly as she can before making her way out into the hall with Shinji tucked closely to her side. "There are better places to hide you. Places with locks that only I can open."

When she glances down at Shinji again, she sees bruises forming beneath his skin from the blows and punches thrown at him. She walks faster, pulling him along as best as she can. "Shinji," she whispers fiercely, "I don't know what the hell is going on. And I haven't known for a long damn time. But I keep going anyway, you see? I keep going because I _have _to. Because I can't just sit back and do nothing while everything goes to hell all around me. And that's what you have to do now. You have to move. You have to keep going. And you have to do it or else you're going to get yourself killed by these people who want you dead, do you understand?"

Shinji stares up at her with wide, glassy eyes. It's the most alive he's looked since his return, and Misato isn't sure whether to be relieved or filled with dread.

"I'm not going to pretend for one fucking second that I have any idea what happened after you left," Misato goes on, panting as she picks up the pace by another few steps. Her eyes dart around the long corridor for any sign of other people. "And I'm not going to pretend that I have any idea how you got out of that alive. And honestly, Shinji, nothing surprises me anymore. Nothing. But you're here now, and you're alive, and you've fucked nearly everything up again, but you know what? Those are the facts. And I'm taking them as they come and _then_ I'll figure out everything else. That's the only way we can keep going. That's how we survive."

They reach their destination – a hidden door so neatly melded with the wall that only someone looking for it would spot it. A quick palm swipe over the wall and Misato finds the passcode, which flares into light at the touch of her hand. It yields to the series of numbers she punches into it, and the hidden door slides open just enough to allow her to shove Shinji into the small, cramped room. Even despite the room's limited size, Shinji still looks so small, so fragile as he stares up at her, not understanding. Misato feels her eyes begin to sting again, but she masks it with a bow of her head as she reaches out to touch the boy's shoulder. She changes her mind midway and retracts her arm, holding it against her chest as if wounded. "You'll be safe in here," she says quietly. "I'll leave the passcode to Asuka in case something happens to me and I can't get you out."

Shinji is breathing heavily, his face flushed as he looks up at the ceiling. His eyes speak of seeing something beyond it; the sky, the stars, heaven itself. "He won't hurt you," he whispers. "He won't hurt anyone. That's not what he's coming for."

Misato stares at him in quiet horror before hissing out another curse and sliding the door shut, locking it with another punch of numbers and fingers that tremble. She hurries down the hall, and when she rounds the corner, Asuka is waiting for her, leaning against the wall and looking dark. "Still couldn't do it, could you?" the girl mutters, looking up at Misato from beneath her sweaty bangs that cling to her forehead in damp strands.

Misato doesn't stop walking. Asuka's eyes burn into her as she passes her by. "You're one to talk," Misato says, handing her a slip of paper with the passcode scribbled on it. "Bringing him back here without so much as a scratch? How much were _you_ holding back?"

Asuka snatches the passcode from her and crumples it in her fist. Her silence tells Misato all she needs to know.

"The AT field," Asuka says roughly, "I can feel it."

Misato stops in her tracks. "And?"

Asuka pauses and turns her eyes up to the ceiling. "It's different. It doesn't feel like all the others did when me and Four-Eyes would take them on."

Misato remembers Shinji's gaze up at the ceiling and his breathy, hopeful words, and suddenly she feels dizzy. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

Asuka huffs out a mirthless laugh. "It means that stupid brat Shinji always gets what he wants."

::

NERV's grounds are still and silent when you and Rei arrive. This, to the both of you, is nothing new, nor is the smell of death that hangs stale and bitter everywhere you go. It's the smell of blood. It's a smell you both know well.

Passing by your piano hurts a little, but you press on. You know precisely where to go, and it doesn't take long to find him.

Gendo Ikari sits slumped in the middle of a bloodbath. When you approach him, he doesn't even so much as spare you a glance, and that angers you, makes you want to spit at him. But you don't. You stand silently atop the platform mere feet away from him and you wait for the rushing in your ears to be silenced. A bitter calm rolls over you, a cold trickle down your spine.

You almost don't recognize the iciness of your own voice when you say, "That was a fine trick you pulled back there, Ikari."

Gendo doesn't outwardly react right away. All he does is sit in a slouched heap and stare at the red wreckage all around him, the now-empty space that his late wife's macabre, grotesque head once occupied. The frigid calm within you splinters and you begin to shake in very fine tremors all throughout your entire body. _Acknowledge me. You've brushed me aside one time too many._

"In fact," you say, stepping down from the platform, "it was a trick that even I didn't foresee until it was too late." You feel the squelch of LCL beneath your feet. It feels so much like blood. "Even fourteen years of planning couldn't have warned me of what you had in store. You're a mastermind. You're _brilliant._"

The sugary tone never leaves your voice even as you spit the words out like acid. You stop a few feet away from him and look down upon his crumpled form, your head tilted, your eyes lidded and low. Heat begins to gather from your core and your body aches with momentum, but you hold yourself back on a tight leash. _Don't hurt him_, a voice in your head whispers. _It won't make Shinji happy. _

Gendo finally reacts to your presence, and for a moment, all he does is let out a hollow huff of a laugh. Not good enough. _Acknowledge me._ Your eyes widen as you glower down upon him, your fingers twitching at your sides. _No. Don't hurt him. It won't make Shinji happy. It won't make Shinji happy. Hold back. Hold back. Hold back._

"Truly nothing surprises me anymore," Gendo finally says, his head bowed. "People are able to essentially come back from the dead all they like these days. But never in quite the right ways, and never the right people."

"Sorry I'm not your wife," you quip, "but I still have something in this world worth coming back for."

Gendo closes his eyes and huffs out another dry laugh. "And what _did_ you return for? To kill me and avenge your deicide?"

"No," you say, the heat in your core getting hotter and hotter the more you hold yourself back. "To make your son happy."

Gendo opens his eyes and looks up at you from behind the shattered lenses of his glasses. "That's a pointless endeavor. There's no hope for him, not after this catastrophe. He'll either be executed for his crimes or take his own life from the guilt of what he's done."

"There's always hope for Shinji," you whisper, your body buzzing with an energy so keen that it's as if your blood crackles with static. "And I'll see to it that he gets the happiness he deserves."

"You have too much faith in him."

"And you have _none_." Your hands twitch into fists, and you feel the taut muscles of your back shiver with all the pent-up fury of countless trials and errors, countless failures, countless times of watching Shinji be hurt over and over again by this man_. _"I don't care about your actions towards me. You could kill me over and over again and it wouldn't be as much cause for my disgust than the first time you knowingly destroyed your son's hope." _And the time after that, and the time after that, and the time after that…_

Gendo furrows his brow up at you and shakes his head as if dealing with a confused and brattish child. "You'll see to his salvation before your own? Why do you care for that boy so much?"

And the words come out so easily, so effortlessly when you say, "Because I love him." It's the only certainty that hasn't faltered in the slightest over all the years, loaded with all the pain and longing of your entire existence by Shinji's side. _Because I love him. Everything I do is because I love him._

Gendo stares at you for a long stretch of silence before turning his eyes back to the empty space his gaze had been fixed on previously. "And I loved her_,_" is all he says, quiet and solemn. "I tried to recreate her in her image as God made man in His, but it was never what I truly wanted to see. It was a copy. A fake."

Rei is motionless and quiet behind you, but you feel something spark in your periphery, the connected space between your thoughts and hers. When you glance back at her, her face is pale and sickly, like that of someone on the verge of fainting. _I'm sorry,_ you think to her. _This is the truth you've been looking for._

Rei's only reply is a hollow look and a small, barely-there nod. You return her nod and turn back to Gendo. "I'm not here to kill you," you say, even as your hands continue to twitch with tightly roped-off energy. "Disposing of you wouldn't bring Shinji any happiness. He only wanted you to be a father to him. That was all he ever asked of you, every time."

Gendo's gaze remains fixed on a single point in space. Ugly red liquid drips from his face and onto the sopping wet floor.

"You don't have anything left now, do you?" you ask quietly, staring down with glowing eyes at the crown of the man's head. "Fourth impact was halted after my death. Instrumentality can't be achieved as you'd planned. In time, the world will rebuild itself and rise out of the wreckage. But you'll remain as you are, won't you? Here in this desolate shrine, unable to move forward. Trapped eternally in the past…"

Your voice trails off into silence. Gendo lifts his head, and when he looks at you, he rather looks right through you. "I'm not the only one out of us who is trapped in the past."

Your breath hitches uncomfortably in your throat as you step away from him, repelled by his words.

"Human Instrumentality would have meant the erasure of all pain, all connections, all of the things that hold humans back from reaching their true potential. All life forms would have taken on one collective shape. No more desires, no more losses, no more running away from the weight of our own fears. And only then…" Gendo rises to stand, swaying unsteadily on his feet as he looks up at the broken ceiling. "I would have become God. Nothing would have been unattainable. Then and only then, I would have seen Yui again, and that would have been my salvation…"

You look upon this man with the last bitter remains of your pity, which curdle cold and sour in your stomach and make you feel ill. "You can't achieve anything through destruction," you murmur, your body humming and hot as you turn your back on him. "And you know nothing of salvation."

As you begin walking away, Gendo speaks from behind you. "You'll come to learn in time that Shinji is no different than I. He can't accept love. He's too far gone to ever deserve it."

Something inside of you snaps and breaks off, and you're suddenly a lean, razor-sharp flash as you whip around and snarl at him with a hatred you didn't know you were capable of, your pupils shifting into thin slits and your teeth sharpening. The hunger of this feeling scares you, and it permeates your every nerve until you're shaking all over, overheated and bristling with a violent, glowing energy from deep inside of you. There has only ever been one other time in which this has happened, and the memory of it makes your head spin and your blood turn cold. (A flash of a memory: the first time you felt like this, like an animal, the loop you never want to think about again, the time you were too late, seeing Shinji's dead and broken body in the entry plug, your heartbreak, your wrath – no, no, don't think about that time, _don't think about it - _)

Rei's hands are on you in moments to hold you back - _(Hold you back from what? What were you going to do? Were you going to hurt Shinji's father? Were you about to make Shinji unhappy again?) – _and Gendo just _looks_ at you, his gaze a picture of nothingness, his expression vacant. Rei is barely holding onto you, yet you're immobile in her grasp, forced to come back down from your sudden spike as the hot, radiant energy swirling like fire in your blood slowly settles. Rei lets go of you only when she thinks you're ready, and even then she looks wary. _What was that? _she thinks to you.

_I have to go_, you think back to her, shivering from the aftershock as you turn on your heel and walk away on shaky legs. _Will you follow me? _

Just as you finish the thought, Gendo calls out Rei's name. Rei hesitates in her reply to you. _Yes, _her thought whispers into your mind. _But not yet._

You stare at her in wonder, but she gives you a nod that tells you she needs to be alone. You glance back at Gendo, then back at Rei. _Be careful_, you think to her, and the calm resolve in her gaze gives you the push you need to leave the crumbling husk of NERV and make your way back out into the sunlight. The warm sun on your face almost makes you feel something like human again.

::

The gun that Gendo gives Rei feels cool and smooth in her hands. She holds it like it's something precious, a new friend.

"I want you to do the honors," Gendo tells her, standing beneath a beam of sunlight that cuts through a hole in the roof. "You should be the last thing I see."

His voice is just like it's always been when he speaks to her; soft, warm, protective. Rei feels as though she must have loved that voice once, or almost-loved, but even that doesn't seem right. Even that feels vague, a stolen emotion that has never truly been hers at all.

The face of a woman she's never met before flashes through her mind, but Rei wills it away. _I am not you. I am me._

Gendo shows her how to switch off the safety and how to pull the trigger. He touches her hand as he guides her, and Rei watches his face the whole time instead of his instructions. She knows how to do this. She knows what will happen.

The last thing he tells her is to shoot herself once he's taken care of. It's an order, a calm one. Rei absorbs his every word and takes the gun back from him as he resumes his place beneath the beam of sunlight once more. He nods to her to give her the signal, and with a graceful rise of her arms, Rei points the gun at him. Aims it right between his eyes.

"I am Rei Ayanami," she whispers, switching off the safety. "And you are Gendo Ikari."

Gendo looks right at her, and Rei knows he is seeing someone else. She remembers test tubes, pills for dinner, being replaced so many times that her memories became scrambled and lost in the haze of her new self. Lost memories, lost connections, lost potential. Gendo's stare remains on her, sticks to her skin like a disease. She places her finger on the trigger.

"I am me," she says, "and you are no god."

When she pulls the trigger, it's not because of an order. It's because she wants to.

And because she wants to live, she spares Gendo's fallen body one final look before leaving NERV behind, taking the gun with her. Nagisa is waiting for her outside, looking worried over the gunshot but relieved when he sees her emerge out into the light.

She looks at him, and for the first time in her new life, she smiles. _Let's go_, she thinks to him. _Everything is fine now._

Nagisa understands without further explanation. They walk on.

::

Asuka returns to Mari's room and the sight of her trying to hobble out of bed like an absolute _idiot_. Asuka is on her within moments, cursing and scolding her, and Mari just laughs like it's nothing and waves her off with one arm. The cart with the IV bag totters dangerously close to tipping over, and Asuka catches it just in time just as she catches onto Mari's arm when the girl sways unsteadily on her feet. Asuka glares at her, panting and agitated in record time. "What the hell do you think you're doing _now?" _she hisses. "How long do I have to babysit you before you stop pulling stupid stunts like this?"

Mari gives her a sinuous smirk and plops back down onto the bed; Asuka doesn't miss the slight flinch she gives, and the sight of it only serves to anger her more. "No one's forcing you to look after me," Mari says in a voice like honey, tilting her head to one side. Her dark hair fans over one half of her face, partially hiding her smile so that it looks strange and crooked. "I'm a big girl, I can lick my own wounds."

"You know, you really piss me off with that happy-go-lucky attitude of yours," Asuka snaps. "Is everything that's happening right now one big joke to you?"

Mari sighs out a laugh and fiddles with the IV tube leading into the needle in her arm. "No need to play dumb, milady. I know you can feel it, too."

At that, Asuka feels her nerves jolt to life in one keen little flare. The AT field is getting closer. "I sacrificed my Eva back there," she says, "and yours is as good as useless. What are we supposed to do to fight against it?"

"Sit back and enjoy the show," Mari chirps. "Because it's not coming for _us_."

Shinji's forlorn face flashes through Asuka's mind, and she clenches her hands into tight knots at her sides. "Of course it's all for Shinji," she growls, her fists shaking. "Everything, _everything _is all for Shinji, that's why the fucking world is like this in the first place!"

"Personally, I'm looking forward to it," Mari says, stretching out her legs and wiggling her long toes. "I want to see it with my own eyes when it happens…"

"See what?"

Mari turns her head to look out the tiny window panel with lidded, teasing eyes. "Puppy-boy's face when he sees his boy-toy come back to play."


	4. first breath after coma

**the earth is (not) a cold dead place**

::

3. first breath after coma

::

Ritsuko Akagi is a scientist, a woman, a daughter – and at this moment, first and foremost, she is apathetic. Her seventh cigarette of the day is lit with a bored flick of a flame, then inhaled with a bored breath, then expelled with a bored sigh. The alarms ringing, the shouts in the halls, the chaos and the commotion – everything, boring.

Misato is frantic and has the fierce eyes of a soldier when she bursts back onto the scene, out of breath and her hair a mess. "I might have a lead," she says, panting. "Hear me out?"

Ritsuko ignores her question and replaces it with one of her own. "Where did you take the prisoner?"

Misato's glare is steely and quick as she hurriedly pushes stray locks of hair out of her eyes. "That's my business and my business alone."

"So now you're pardoning him for nearly destroying the world a _second _time," Ritsuko says with a flat laugh. "How typical of you."

"Are you going to listen to what I have to say, or are you going to keep taking your cheap shots at me?"

Ritsuko turns her gaze up to the ceiling in a mock moment's thought. A steady stream of smoke bleeds out of the corner of her parted mouth.

"We don't have time for this bullshit, Ritsuko," Misato hisses, all dark eyes and fine-tuned aggression that Ritsuko has dealt with for _how_ long now? "Listen to me. You can bitch at me for my typical decisions later, preferably when we're not in the middle of a crisis."

"Crisis?" Ritsuko coughs out a laugh and tips her cigarette ashes onto the floor. "What's there left to destroy? We're living in a vacant shell. We don't have anything left to lose except our lives."

Misato looks at her in a moment's horror which she quickly masks with her customary determination that Ritsuko can't help but find horribly droll. "I think I have some information on what exactly is coming," she says, her voice firm and focused. "But you might not believe me when I say it."

"There's nothing I wouldn't believe anymore."

"The angel that's coming…I don't think it's like the others. It's not hostile."

Ritsuko stares at Misato with a deadpanned expression, breathing smoke in her face. "Not hostile," she says flatly.

"Asuka and Shinji both clued me in on it," Misato goes on. "I was going to give Shinji the benefit of the doubt given his current condition, but Asuka…even she seemed to pick up on it. And we've known for a long time that she didn't come out of the Bardiel incident the same as before she entered that Eva."

Ritsuko raises her eyebrows and takes another long drag of her cigarette, burning it away until it shrinks down to half its size. "No need to remind me. I was the one conducting the tests on her after the incident."

"Then it doesn't bear repeating the things she's capable of now," Misato says. "She's never been wrong about an angel's presence before."

"And what's Shinji's excuse?"

Misato heaves out a sigh and shrugs her shoulders, wincing at the overhead alarm still sounding out and echoing throughout the building. "I don't have the time or energy to work through that just yet. But…he'd been locked in stasis inside of Unit 01 for fourteen years. It's not that much of a stretch to assume he's in a similar position to Asuka at this point."

Ritsuko finishes off her cigarette and drops it to the floor, crushing it beneath her boot heel with a twist of her ankle. "Kids are already difficult enough," she mutters, "let alone inhuman ones…"

"What do _you_ think we should do, then?" Misato's voice takes a turn for the accusing, just as Ritsuko had expected. She knows her style so well. "Fact is, we don't have the means to fight off what's coming. Mari is injured, Asuka's Eva is destroyed, and we wouldn't dare let Shinji pilot even if he weren't practically catatonic. So let's hear _your_ plan."

"How about mine?" Mari's voice comes unbidden from a few feet away, ringing out clearly through the noise. Ritsuko turns to see the girl slumped against Asuka's side, her feline smirk a subtle little slip at the corner of her mouth. Asuka's dark gaze remains fixed on the floor as she holds Mari up.

"Do you have some sort of lead?" Misato asks, weighing her words carefully.

"I suppose you could call it that," Mari says on a light singsong. "But it's more friendly advice than anything."

"Out with it, whatever you want to call it."

Mari's smirk deepens as the dark fall of her hair fans over her face at the low bow of her head. "Alright, then, here it is. If you don't want Shinji blowing this place to pieces, I'd suggest you be _real _nice to our little guest once he arrives."

"'He'?" Misato repeats, alarm clear in her voice what with how it cracks. "What do you mean 'he'?"

"Mm, just a hunch." But the teasing glow of Mari's gaze tells Ritsuko in an instant that her ignorance is a joke, much like everything else with this girl is. "But it might be in your best interests to take my hunch seriously."

Ritsuko turns her attention to Asuka, who has become a sharp shadow in the midst of her tightly-wound anger. All the fury of these past fourteen years is evident in the fine tremors wracking her entire body. Energy radiates from where she stands, feral and hot, shivering to be unleashed.

"And it would be in _your_ best interests to keep from being purposefully vague with us," Misato snaps. "Asuka told me the presence isn't hostile, yet you seem to be saying the opposite. Which one is it?"

Mari snorts out a laugh. "I never said he was hostile. But if anyone tries to hurt him, that'll be another story. Puppy-boy will end the world and he won't miss this time."

"What the fuck does Shinji have to do with this?" Misato's voice is shaking much like the rest of her. "Say what you mean and stop curtailing around the details!"

Mari lets out a laugh that turns into a hiss of pain, her arm belting around her wounded stomach. Ritsuko doesn't miss the worried glance that Asuka shoots her way before she scoffs and picks up where Mari left off. "The angel doesn't want anything to do with us," she says. A dangerous and electric blue glow flares up from beneath her eye patch. "It only wants _Shinji._"

Ritsuko absorbs this with the customary, scientific detachment that has kept her afloat for years. She can hear Misato breathing heavily beside her, can see how her hands clench into tight fists at her sides; she can almost _feel_ the woman's mind kicking into overdrive as she tries to work out some sort of plan. Always driven, always so headstrong. Ritsuko would almost feel bad for her if she weren't so tired.

"All we can do now is wait," Mari says, her voice still tight with pain even as she smiles. "He'll be here any moment now. Like a knight rescuing his prince…"

"And what the hell are we supposed to do when it gets here?" Misato's voice is so sharp it might as well cut through skin, but Mari's calm exterior isn't even so much as dented. "Just sit back and watch like it's nothing? This is an angel we're dealing with, not a fucking house guest!"

Ritsuko lets out a dry laugh and steps back to lean against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. "Moments ago you were just excusing the angel as a non-threat. Now you're suddenly back up in arms the moment Shinji's involved?"

Misato shoots her an icy look and is just about to speak before Asuka snaps, slamming her fist into the wall so hard that the cement splinters. "I'm sick of hearing about everyone fucking bending over backwards for that stupid _brat!" _

Mari's smile falters as she turns and looks at Asuka. It's the most candid she's ever looked.

"If you all think for five fucking seconds that I'm gonna just sit back and listen to this shit about Shinji Shinji _Shinji_, then think again, because I'm done." Asuka's furious gaze flits up to the monitor for one hot moment before she scoffs and turns on her heel, holding out an arm for Mari to hold herself up on as they start off down the hall. "Another alarm's about to go off," she hisses. "Get ready for it."

"What – "

Misato's voice is cut off when the alarm sounds out perfectly on cue, louder and more urgent than the one before. The swinging doors burst open with a shove and Maya Ibuki storms out, typing into her handheld with frantic fingers. "The security system's being breached," she reports, out of breath and horribly flushed as she hurries over to her computer. "We did a rundown of the exterior securities upholding this place but they're falling one by one at an enormous rate."

The muscles of Misato's jaw tighten as she grits her teeth. "So the angel has already made contact with us?"

"Yes," Maya gasps out, her shoulders rising and falling quickly as she tries to catch her breath. "By the looks of it, it's able to break through even the most complex technologies without exerting any energy, yet the energy surrounding it is incredibly strong. It's untouchable."

Ritsuko heaves out a long sigh and digs through her coat pocket for her cigarettes.

"And where's everyone else?" Misato asks sharply.

"Enforcing the backup security systems, but it's no use. They're all being broken into like it's nothing."

Ritsuko takes a seat and lights up her eighth cigarette. "Maya, turn off that alarm."

Maya looks at her as if seeing a stranger. "What…how are you remaining so nonchalant in the middle of an attack like this?"

"Because I want to enjoy my cigarette in peace," Ritsuko says coolly, "without that goddamn alarm deafening me. Turn it off."

Maya looks at her with wide eyes for a few beats before pursing her lips and begrudgingly switching off the alarm. The silence that suddenly washes over the room feels out of place and alien; things haven't been quiet in so long.

Maya tries to say something, but Ritsuko immediately interrupts her with a show of her hand, silencing her without a word. She doesn't speak until the last of her cigarette burns away into ash and is crushed into the ashtray on her desk. "Misato."

Misato stiffens immediately, glancing sideways at Ritsuko.

"You'd better make sure wherever you've hidden Shinji is secure."

Misato rolls her eyes. "Considering the angel can break through this entire fortress's security, I don't think it'd have any problem getting into a locked room."

"I'm not talking about protecting him from the angel. I'm talking about protecting him from _our_ people." Ritsuko leans back in her chair and closes her eyes. "Because if the angel finds out that someone here has killed him before it can do what it wants with him, we're going to have some problems."

"I'm not _letting_ the angel take Shinji away!"

Ritsuko opens her eyes and serves Misato a dreary look. "Misato, you've tried to protect that boy for years. Look where it's gotten you."

Rather than Misato flaring with her usual anger, her entire face drains to white, her eyes round and gleaming as she looks at Ritsuko like a hurt child. Ritsuko shakes her head and closes her eyes again. The wounded silence stretches on like an old friend.

::

"I hate him."

Mari smiles, limping alongside Asuka down the hallway. "Hating him, huh…wouldn't that make it so much easier on you?"  
Asuka's gaze is focused directly ahead of her, cold, violent – but most of all, hurt. Mari knows that expression of hers so well. "It's already easy," she growls. "I hate him."

"More than you hate yourself?"

Asuka comes to a stop, not looking at Mari, not looking at anything but the fixed and vacant space ahead of her. Mari takes a step closer to her and holds onto her arm to remain upright; the pain that jolts through her sprained leg is lovely, and she hisses with relief at the shock that it sends to her nerves. "You know," she says through a soft groan of pain, "you really learn a lot about someone when you spend fourteen years by their side. You're no exception to that, princess."

"Don't give me that," Asuka retorts. "Just because we work together doesn't mean you get some free pass into my heart and soul and all that shit. I'm not that sentimental."

Mari sighs out a laugh and presses her cheek against Asuka's arm. She feels the other's muscles go tense at the touch, as if jarred by the gentleness of it in place of pain and exhaustion. "Of course you're not. If you were sentimental, you'd be carrying me bridal-style down this hallway instead of making me walk."

"_You're _the one who thought it was so vitally important to go in there and speak with them." Asuka grits her teeth and shoves her free hand into the pocket of her jacket. "Even Misato wants to look out for him. So pathetic."

Mari doesn't remark on that, instead choosing to take in the angular prettiness of Asuka's profile and wonder what she'd look like if her body wasn't locked in a time clutch. _Probably just as angry_, she thinks fondly.

"I don't care anymore," Asuka says quietly, still staring straight ahead with a hollow look. "Whatever's coming for him, let it come. Maybe it'll carry him off to some other world and I'll never have to see his stupid face ever again."

Mari smiles softly and shakes her head, lightly brushing Asuka's shoulder with her fingertips. "Whatever makes you feel better. Let it out."

Asuka mutters something beneath her breath that Mari doesn't make out. They begin walking again, with Mari shuffling and limping at her side and Asuka going as slowly as she can to allow her to keep up. It's a quietly endearing gesture that Mari wonders whether Asuka herself notices she's doing. _Either one would be cute, _she thinks with a secretive tilt of a smirk and then a wince when her ankle cracks at her next step.

They're silent for a little while before Asuka stops again, avoiding Mari's eye when she asks, "You…feel what I feel, right?"

Mari feels something flip over in her stomach, something giddy and silly despite the circumstances. "Yeah," she says softly. "I really do…"

"So the angel really isn't hostile?"

Whatever had risen inside of Mari's chest deflates in an instant, and she masks it with a casual toss of her head to flick her hair out of her eyes. "Oh. Mhm. He's soft as a peach."

Asuka nods, looking distracted. "Just making sure we're on the same page here."

"Oh, totally. We always are – "

She's cut short when a sudden cold rush of energy renders her breathless, like a swift and chilled wind piercing right through her and freezing her down to her bones. Asuka seems to feel it as well, judging by the harsh gasp she gives and the way she reaches for Mari's arms on some instinctive urge to guard her. Mari doesn't even have the time to appreciate it before there's the sound of whispery footsteps and one last rush of a cold phantom breeze – and then, just down the hall, stands Rei Ayanami, and beside her, their angel.

_Kaworu Nagisa_. Mari knows this name apart from the physical being that owns it, and the shock of seeing him in the flesh for the first time is moreso a quiet appreciation for the absurdity of the situation. As Asuka sucks in a violent gasp at the sight of him, Mari merely laughs with a snort, waving at him casually. "Well, aren't _you_ pretty," she says. "Puppy-boy has good taste."

Kaworu looks at her with a mixture of confusion and a fractured sort of anxiety that makes him look owlish and eerie. But his gaze only rests on her for a brief moment before he turns his attention to Asuka, soundless and searching. When he remains quiet, Mari feels Asuka flare up with a seething chill of her own. "But clearly this _thing_ doesn't," she spits out. "Only a fool would feel anything for that pathetic little – "

The look that flashes in Kaworu's eyes is so sudden and sharp that it even knocks Asuka off guard, stealing the words right from her mouth. "He cared for _you_," he says quietly, the softness of his voice carrying itself down the hall despite the distance.

"Bullshit!" Asuka shouts with a glow of blue from beneath her eye patch once more. "He's never given a fuck about anyone but himself! That's why we're all in this mess to begin with, because he's a selfish brat who doesn't know what's good for anyone!"

Kaworu stares at her silently for a few moments before closing his eyes and bowing his head. Rei stands beside him, looking at him warily with eyes just like his.

"I don't know what the hell's going on here," Asuka says, panting with rage, "but I don't care anymore, you hear me? I don't care where you take him, I don't care what you do with him, just get him out of here before someone…"

_Before someone hurts him? _Mari thinks, reading the girl's mind easily as her voice trails off. _No, you wouldn't want that…_

Asuka grits her teeth and shakes her head like an animal ripping into another's flesh. "God, and you even bring _her_ along with you," she whispers. "What an insult…"

Rei glances at Asuka out the corner of her eye, furrowing her brow in muted concern.

"Just get him out of here," Asuka whispers, her voice agonized with a misery that makes Mari's stomach hurt. "Do it before I change my mind."

"That was my intention," Kaworu says, still so softly. "He's what I'm here for."

Asuka huffs out a bitter, awful sort of laugh. "And that's why they've written this situation off as a non-threat? Because of some pervert who wants to steal Shinji away?"

Kaworu looks at her with an expression that Mari can't place – something ironic and knowing, almost like an inside joke only with himself – before tilting his head to the side and asking, "What's a pervert?"

Asuka's eyes widen the barest bit, her mouth parted in speechless wonder as if she's just been stricken by something that no one but her can see. But the expression is gone in an instant, so quickly it might as well have not been there at all.

Mari had become so wrapped up in observing their exchange that she doesn't even realize she's being addressed until she hears Kaworu ask, "You know who I am, don't you?"

Mari looks back at him, weighing her response very carefully. She can feel Asuka staring at her in pensive alarm and eventually decides on, "I might have heard of you in passing."

Kaworu doesn't look convinced. His stare remains locked on hers, his pale face etched with an otherworldly sorrow that Mari doesn't think any language has a word for. All the while, she feels Asuka's cold eyes drilling into her profile, demanding answers that Mari can't give just yet.

"But more on that later," Mari says with a nonchalant wave of her hand. "This isn't what you're here for, right? Go get a move on."

Kaworu regards her for a silent moment, then turns his attention to Asuka once more. "When you tried to stop us," he says, "you were just doing what you thought was right, weren't you?"

Asuka's face goes pale. "What…?"

Kaworu's smile is like that of a ghost's, indistinct and haunted. "Don't blame Shinji for this. Please, blame me."

Asuka gapes at him in speechless confusion before realization dawns on her in a slow wave. "Shinji wasn't the only pilot in the Eva…?"

_That a girl,_ Mari thinks.

Kaworu's eyes lid, and his smile takes a turn for the morbid. "Of course he wasn't. Didn't you see the blood on the wall?"

Asuka's face loses all its color. Kaworu lifts his head in a moment's sudden rapt attention as he listens for something neither Mari nor Asuka can hear. But Mari doesn't have to be able to hear it herself to know what he's listening for. (Though for one brief moment, she swears she can hear Shinji's muffled cries coming from just down the hall…)

"What the hell were you trying to do back there?" Asuka asks, her voice hoarse and weak. Mari can see the line of her shoulders trembling. "What did you tell him to make him do something so _stupid_?"

Kaworu slowly turns his attention away from the ceiling, looking both serene and wounded. The look he gives Asuka makes even Mari feel a chill. "He wanted to redo. He wanted to atone for the sake of all the people he held dear but now fear him. And when I gave him the chance to do that, he gladly took it. He trusted me."

Rei drops her gaze to the floor as Kaworu's hands begin to shake.

"Everything he did was out of hope that he could fix this world," Kaworu goes on in a fragile, glass-like voice. "The outcome was a fault…entirely mine."

Mari catches Asuka's wince when Kaworu turns on his heel and takes the first steps in the direction his rapt gaze had been focused previously. Rei watches him with quietly wondering eyes, not following him. Mari can hear Asuka's strained breathing as she looks wildly from Kaworu to Rei and back to Kaworu. "How do I know you're not lying about all this?" she demands, her usual fire diluted with shock and something that sounds dangerously close to fear.

Kaworu glances over his shoulder at her with an unaffected stare. "I have no need to lie. I only need Shinji."

Asuka's face flushes with rage, but Kaworu's soft smile sobers the rough edges of her frustration just as she opens her mouth to speak. "Despite your anger," Kaworu says quietly, "you're more caring than you give yourself credit for."

It's the last thing he says before vanishing down the hall, leaving the three girls in tense silence in the middle of the cold hallway. Mari watches Asuka's profile carefully, picking through the girl's unreadable expression little by little. Right when she's about to speak, Asuka cuts her off. "Don't," she murmurs, staring wide-eyed down at the floor. "Don't look at me. Don't talk to me. Don't do anything." And then, desperately, she whispers, "Please."

Mari closes her mouth and replaces the unspoken words on her tongue with a small, forced lift of a smile. She gently drops her hand away from Asuka's arm, having been holding onto her this entire time, and turns to look at Rei at the other end of the hall. "So, you wanna come with us? Might just be me, but I wouldn't wanna go within a few meters of where he's gone off to. Talk about awkward."

Rei doesn't seem to catch onto the innuendo and simply stares at her, her brow furrowed and her mouth set in a serious line.

"But putting that aside," Mari adds, hobbling towards her, "it might not be a good idea for the others to see you…imagine how much of a shit-fit that would start, right?"

Rei's eyes light up with understanding. She sends one last glance down the hall that Kaworu drifted off to before coming to meet Mari. Asuka visibly bristles when she gets closer, but her defeat makes her unable to pick a fight. She remains cold and untouchable in her silence; there's nothing left to say.

::

In his hidden-away sector of space, Shinji is burning from the inside out. His heart is thrumming on double-time in his chest, one-two one-two one-two, a quick little flutter in his ribcage that makes it hard to breathe. Tears sting at the corners of his eyes as his hands shake from the hungry buzz of his body, reaching through the shadows for someone who isn't here yet.

But he can feel him. He can feel Kaworu, just down the hall, just outside this door, just beyond the perimeters of his senses. His heartbeat drums faster, one-two-one-two-one-two. The edges of his conscience sharpen into focus as he closes his eyes and listens for a sign of life outside the door – muffled speaking, voices that aren't Kaworu's, Misato? Ritsuko? The clicking of machines, the tapping of buttons and keys. Voices being sent over radio frequencies. Sounds that don't belong to Kaworu.

_I heard your voice, _Shinji thinks, his head lolling to the side as he backs up against the wall to keep from collapsing. _I can feel you…I know you're here, I _know_ you're here, so please…please, come to me…_

Shinji's eyes fly open at the sudden swell of energy that he senses close by. He tunes in his focus to the sounds of the hallway and hears delicate, padding footsteps, unsteady breathing, the raise of a hand…

"I'm here," Shinji whimpers, his face wet with tears as he closes his aching eyes. "Kaworu, I'm here…"

The passcode lock is broken through with a zip.

"I'm here, I'm here, please…"

Shinji opens his eyes just in time for the door to slide to the side and let in a single beam of light.

The glowing silhouette of Kaworu stands motionless in the doorway. Wispy tatters of the silk draped over his body flutter around him like the feathers of timid wings furled against his legs. The red glimmer of his eyes shines bright and lucid in the gloomy darkness of the room.

The still and silent spell casted between them suddenly splinters, and Shinji is running to him on clumsy legs as everything else in the world drops away and is rendered meaningless. Nothing but Kaworu remains, the entire world centering round where he stands. The door zips to a close behind him, and Kaworu opens his arms, his eyes misting over as he breathes out a shaky, frantic plea of Shinji's name.

When they collide, the universe comes to a standstill. The two of them are all there is, all there ever was, all there will ever be.

Shinji breaks in a sob when Kaworu's arms wrap around him so tightly that it should hurt, but all he feels is relief pouring over him in hot waves that have him clinging onto Kaworu with everything he has. Kaworu's hands are everywhere all at once, gripping Shinji's hair to grabbing his shoulders to running his palms down his back; he touches everything he can with an urgency that Shinji encourages with a hungry arch of his back and a panting plea of Kaworu's name as he clutches onto the ragged silk covering the other's slender body.

Neither of them can speak. The sheer weight of every word they can't say hangs down on them and only leaves room for each other's name.

Kaworu's cool hands rise to cup Shinji's face, his eyes wild and gleaming with tears as he looks him over with a desperate eagerness, as if unsure of where to look first. Shinji feels a hot, pulsing energy radiating from Kaworu's body and sinking into his own everywhere that Kaworu touches him, a bright and feral tug that jolts Shinji's nerves into action and draws a hungry moan out of him before their lips even meet.

It's too frantic to tell who moves in first, their fever coloring the both of them unstable and needy, but Shinji's mind goes deliciously blank the moment they find each other in a shuddering, gasping clash of a kiss. Despite how cool the rest of him is, Kaworu's mouth is hot, hot and parted and trembling as Shinji surges forward and deepens the kiss on his own accord, too feverish to care about restraints anymore. Kaworu pushes back against him with a winded groan and presses his leg between Shinji's thighs, parting them easily; the heady moan that Shinji lets out in between the next clumsy kiss is all the encouragement he can give as his mind reels with pleasant shock and the lines of his body become blurry and dreamlike with heat.

He feels himself being lifted, and he immediately wraps his legs around the other's waist to hold onto him tighter as he's pushed up against the wall and held in place against the lean sliver of Kaworu's body. Kaworu is everywhere all at once, kissing him anywhere his lips can land on, licking the tears that cling to Shinji's cheeks. His every movement is that of a hungry animal, and Shinji urges him on with breathy chants of his name, tipping his head back to offer up his throat to the hot suck of Kaworu's mouth and the shock of his teeth. He feels Kaworu reaching down with a frantic hand to yank up his nightgown until he's bare from the waist down, and Shinji can only shiver, his thighs aching around the boy's hips as he holds on for dear life. But Kaworu won't let him go. He won't let him fall. And Shinji knows this with such certainty that he allows himself to let go and reach down to pull up the pale shroud covering Kaworu's body until he too is bare right where Shinji needs him.

Their hips align in such a way that their bodies rub together in a searing line of heat, and Shinji has to bite down onto the curve of Kaworu's shoulder to keep from crying out. But Kaworu doesn't bother to stifle his own winded moans as he kisses Shinji's face over and over again, his arms wrapping around Shinji's back and his fingers threading into his hair. He moves again, and Shinji is reduced to a helpless, overheated squirm against him; when Kaworu's hand wraps around them both, Shinji's jaw drops in a tremulous moan as his hips cant upwards with a quick little jolt that makes Kaworu gasp into his ear, the muscles of his shoulders tensing in Shinji's hold. The hard, hot press of Kaworu's arousal rubbing against his own and the quick, shaking pass of his hand makes Shinji's every thought go cloudy until all he can do is let himself be completely absorbed in this moment, unable to imagine any time stretching before or after it; his entire world has become one single point in space, one single being.

"Kaworu – " Shinji's nails dig into Kaworu's shoulders as a hard shudder surges through him. "I – I need you, _please_ – "

"I'm right here," Kaworu pants out against Shinji's throat. "I'm right here, I won't leave you – "

"Don't leave me," Shinji pleads on a half-moan, half-sob, unable to control the wildness of his breath what with how Kaworu steals it away with every touch. "Don't – _a-ah – _don't ever leave me again, not again, please, please…"

Kaworu silences his cries with another hard press of his mouth, and Shinji takes the kiss greedily, a long, hoarse moan dragged out of him as they grind harder against each other. His fingers tangle into Kaworu's hair and tug, and the raw, hungry sound that Kaworu makes into his mouth is enough to nearly send Shinji over the edge right then and there. One hand flutters down to grab at Kaworu's wrist, urging him on faster with shudders of his hips and delirious, panting words that never finish themselves completely before they're broken by whimpers of the other's name. His tongue traces hot along Kaworu's, wet and soft and wanting, before there's the sudden bite of Kaworu's teeth at his bottom lip, and Shinji comes undone.

It's with an unbearable tightening throughout his entire self that Shinji is pushed to the very limits of what his body can take. Everything rises to a nearly painful tension, and he breaks the kiss with a choked-off breath that suspends heatedly between their lips. Kaworu is looking at him, his gaze hot and waiting as he breathes out his name, _adoring_, and Shinji feels himself slip over the edge as everything crashes down around him in shuddering, arching waves of heat. Words fail him as he's reduced to a mess of whines and gasps, his hips rolling deep and hard against Kaworu's body and into his hand. Kaworu loses himself just in time with a ragged gasp, holding Shinji's chin with shaking fingers to keep their eyes locked, to not let Shinji look away from him as they both melt together and fall apart. Kaworu is beautiful when he comes, his eyes glowing and bright, his breath short and fast, his entire body still and tense before he shudders on a long exhale that almost sounds like a sob. His arms wind around Shinji's shoulders to hold him tightly, and Shinji rolls his hips weakly against him in little spasms as his body climbs back down from his high, overheated and delirious.

With Kaworu's breath on his lips and their bodies touching so close, so bare, Shinji feels as though he could die one million times over and be reborn into this exact moment time and time again, and not once would it ever feel anything less than perfection. His tears fall freely now as Kaworu kisses him over and over again, the barest-there touches of his lips in between little jumps of breath. When they sink to the floor, it's as Shinji's body is nothing but air what with how his limbs feel so light they might as well be imaginary.

He pulls Kaworu atop him once his back meets the floor, the chill of the cement permeating through the thin gown just barely covering him. His limbs are shaky and weak as he wraps his legs around Kaworu's hips and his arms around lean shoulders, nestling his face in the crook of the other's neck. The mess between them is no matter to him. Everywhere their bodies touch is sacred. The horrific memories of lifetimes that Shinji doesn't understand are all diluted and washed out, content, sleepy delirium taking their place until all he can think of is how neatly their bodies align, how soft Kaworu's skin is, how perfect it would be to lie here and do this again and again and again without ever having to devote their time to anything else…

Kaworu's breath is hitching in little gasps, and Shinji opens his eyes in quiet worry at the sensation of warm tears dripping onto his skin. Gently, he coaxes Kaworu to lift his head and look at him, touching his face with the barest grazes of his palms. Kaworu's eyes are closed, but the tears flow steadily down his cheeks and drip onto Shinji's lips. In a daze, Shinji reaches up to trace the tear tracks with deft fingertips before lifting his head and kissing each one, tasting salt and skin as Kaworu lingers above him, agonized and beautiful. "You came back for me…" Shinji whispers to him, kissing along the fine arch of his cheekbone. He repeats these words on a delirious whisper over and over again, chanting them like a prayer against Kaworu's mouth, his tears dripping down like holy water onto his tongue.

"I've always come back for you…" Kaworu's breath hitches again; more tears stream in its wake. "Everything I do…has always been for you only…"

Shinji leans in to kiss him, the contact little more than a soft, searching brush of his lips. He hears Kaworu breathe out the sweetest of moans, the exhale a sleepy sigh into Shinji's mouth.

"I remember now," Shinji whispers. "You standing in the water…you told me you loved me…"

Shinji feels Kaworu suddenly stiffen as red eyes open to look down at him in muted horror. Shinji gazes back at him, serene and hazy as he strokes Kaworu's tears away with the pads of his thumbs. "You told me I was fragile like glass…and you were right, weren't you? You understood me when no one else did…"

"Shinji, no…" Kaworu squeezes his eyes shut as a fresh stream of tears slithers down his cheeks. "Please, no, don't remember – "

"But Kaworu, you're a lot like glass, too," Shinji murmurs adoringly, leaning up to kiss the side of Kaworu's throat. He sees a thin, jagged line of red flare up under the touch of his lips, radiating heat. Shinji remembers the collar strapped around that pale throat and holds him tighter in response, feeling him tremble and gasp as he cries. A small smile touches Shinji's lips as his head spins with adoration for this pained body in his arms, his every thought cloudy and fogged over with a love that will gladly consume him. "And that's why…I'm not going to let anyone ever hurt you again…"

Kaworu drops his forehead onto Shinji's chest as he openly weeps, his shoulders heaving as his body is wracked with sobs. They cling to each other with everything they have as the faint sound of footsteps echo from down the hall beyond their secret door.

In the gathering shadows of the room, Shinji's eyes glow an electric blue.


End file.
